


Parallel Lives

by Northland



Category: Firefly
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Depressing, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 10:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northland/pseuds/Northland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just five of the many places Mal's life could have gone off the rails.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parallel Lives

**Author's Note:**

> Another old story (originally written in 2005). No spoilers for the movie.
> 
> Thanks to Elena and DarkEmerald for the shiny beta.

No-one is on the bridge but the yawning pilot and Mal. It's the middle of the night ship-time, when the ship seems most his and he can ignore the demands of crew for an hour or so. All he sees are stars thickly scattered over the deep black. From this out-atmo vantage, each one looks like a tiny pinprick hole, a sharp-edged tunnel into another 'verse. Nothing but a few million molecules of tensile glass separates him from deep vacuum. He takes one measured step closer, watching his breath fog the inside surface.

"Captain Reynolds?"

Mal turns to face the saluting messenger. "At ease, officer." He takes the chunky datadisk from the young woman's outstretched hand. "From Sihnon depot?"

"I couldn't say, sir." The lieutenant's answer is prudently opaque; this one should go far. But he didn't need to ask. Only the most sensitive messages are sent in hardcopy rather than encoded over the open cortex. It must be about the wanted Firefly-class ship he spotted out of Hyalin Port, the one he's been discreetly following for two days. No wonder it's taken so long for his orders, if they can only be trusted to offwave comm.

Mal doesn't look at the officer again before dismissing her back to her messroom, with another tale of tight-ass Captain Reynolds, no doubt. Do they think he signed up to make friends? He jumped at the first recruiter's offer because he wanted off the lump of dirt he was born on, and battlefield promotions got him higher in the ranks than anyone not born in the Core should have had a chance at. He intends to die with command of the _Hieronymus_ clenched in his two fists, and if hanging on to it requires that he treat every person on it, including himself, like a balky piece of machinery -- that's a laughably small price.

*

Reavers don't sleep. Some are just too far gone to need it; some are in too much pain from the radiation gnawing sores in their skin. Most of them have enough self-preservation left to know it's the others' best chance of gutting them.

This one can't sleep because of the dreams: dreams in which he sees the ship the way it used to be, with painted vines on the kitchen bulkhead instead of smeared blood. The dreams are dangerous. He wakes from them and remembers the girl (kaylee -- no no no no names) smiling, not as the loose-jointed toy he made her.

After one of those dreams, the engine room is a no-go zone. The torn hammock trailing in the corner wakes that pleading ghost. The cabins are just as bad: all those scraps of cloth and flesh, shouting at him of the crew that used to be. He stalks the dark corridors, slashing and snarling at other Reavers who cross his path. His tongue dangles from a string around his neck -- wasn't needed, so he cut it out. Simpler that way. Everything's simpler now.

*

On the morning of the last day of the battle for Serenity Valley, Malcolm Reynolds got up to piss and took a bullet in the gut.

He died just before he'd seen too much. He died with a purpose and in the certainty that God was waiting for him, ready to count the fall of one browncoat like that of each sparrow. He died stinking of shit and grunting in pain, but still in possession of the vital illusion that the 'verse cared. All his other selves envy him that.

What did he find after death -- heaven, or hell? None of the living Mals believe in either, but all the same they consider him a lucky bastard. Their ships are named _Serenity_ in memory of that phantom, as much as for Bendis or any other casualty of the battle.

*

The girl is barely thawed, all sticky with nightmare eyes and still shaking like a newborn calf. Mal feels a vague pity for her, but it don't change his mind.

"Get off my ship," he tells the Core slicker in his too-shiny vest.

The boy doesn't give up easy, that's one thing to be said for him. "We could use your help, Captain, and you could use mine. I'm proposing a mutually beneficial agreement."

Mal signals, and Zoe racks her shotgun. "I don't think there's much we can agree on."

"Please! I've tried to make up for the trouble I brought you. I don't expect forgiveness--"

"Good, because you lied to me and to everyone on this ship and that's not a forgiving matter. I don't take on passengers or crew I can't trust. Now get out."

Inara touches his arm. "Doctor Tam did everything he could. You know the ship doesn't have the advanced equipment that it would have taken to save Kaylee."

"I don't need a peacemaker right now, ambassador," he warns her, and shrugs her hand off. "I'll say it one more time in case you're hard of hearing, doctor: get off my ship. If you're lucky, our paths won't ever cross again."

*

The old man's even crabbier than usual today. He sits on his tilted porch, sipping shine from a jar, finding fault with everything Pete's brung him. Pete hates coming to this gou se ranch but his ma insists, though she won't say any more on the subject than "We owe him." Pete don't see how that can be; everyone knows Reynolds is a coward, never even fought in the Unification War.

Today Pete's too excited to care about the old man's grousing. He's got news to tell. "There's a Firefly class ship in port. Came in yesterday morning." Small and dented as it is, it's the biggest ship anyone round here has seen for months; there ain't much traffic on a dusty Rim world like Shadow. "Crew of five and a couple passengers, even."

Reynolds spits over the uneven porch railing. "And I bet you're just itching to run off into the black, arn'cha. Sometimes you're just as big a sha gua as I ever was."

"Shut up, y'old buzzard. You don't know a damn thing about anything."

Reynolds laughs and coughs at the same time, a filthy wet rasp. "Did you know I coulda been your grandfather, boy? Your grandmother an' me, we got close after her first husband died in the war… but I didn't want any downside entanglements. I wanted to be free to fly anytime I chose." His watery eyes, filmed over with the beginning of cataracts, stare at Pete. "Listen now. If you want to go, go. If you want to stay, then live your life. Just don't get stuck dreaming in between."

He looks at the horizon. "I thought I'd get away once too."


End file.
